Blink - XT Home Security Camera System, Motion Detection, HD Video, 2-Year Battery, Free Cloud Storage Included - 3 Camera - Black

First let me say we use these as a secondary system where I work for an area not covered by our regular camera system and it's a good, BASIC, camera system. Let me get one important piece of info out right now, though - they use AA LITHIUM batteries, NOT AA Alkaline batteries like "regular" Duracell or Energizers. They do come with AA Lithiums by Energizer to get you started, but once you replace them, if you put regular AA Alkalines in them, the battery life will be horrible. AA Lithiums can be found online at Best Buy (Energizer AA Lithium). The two year battery life rating comes from using the AA Lithiums, in a low activity zone area where you want to monitor for security (back and basement doors, front door, etc), but if you turn them on with kids/pets running around all day you'll not only wear the batteries down fast, but get tons of phone alerts. Use them where and when there is not a lot of activity where you put them. That out of the way, you pair the small hub that comes with it to your WiFi, and your cameras pair to the hub. You need decent WiFi both in terms of coverage and upload speed for these to work correctly, as any wireless security camera needs a certain amount of bandwidth in upload speed from your WiFi to upload video well. Say, 2Mbps (how it's measured) PER CAMERA for best results. If you're not sure what your upload speed is, check with your provider or test it via online speed tests. If your upload speed is too slow, or your coverage is poor, so will be the video from these. Resolution is 720p. Decent but not super sharp. Night video is fair at best. The motion sensor is basic - it will pick up movement if you place it where movement may occur from side-to-side. If someone walks directly toward it in a straight line, it takes longer for it to activate. It works via it's app on Apple or Android. Customer service is done online (they have no phone number) and is fair. Last, the mountain brackets that come with these are cheesy and limited in movement. There are third party rotating brackets online (the place that starts with A) that can be bought, however. Remember - these are NOT $1,000 cameras. They are not Arlo (a step above these), or Nest (best but also with expensive monthly cloud fees). They are what I'd call a starter system that are much better than nothing, but not the very best. You do get some free cloud storage with them. They go on sale frequently so look for sales. The best home security is a LAYERED system - these to alert you on your phone BEFORE someone gets into your house or is lurking around, then also have a monitored regular system for your home, and if money permits, even a video doorbell. Don't forget extra long screws in your door lock's plates, and even impact film on glass doors.

The hardware itself feels cheap, but not cheap enough where it would prevent it from getting the job done. Everything is plastic, which is fine, but the issue with a plastic mounting bracket is that if it is windy, the camera will wobble which will constantly set off false alarms. Additionally, while my camera didn't fall out of the bracket, it does not feel very secure as it is a small plastic circle that snaps into a slightly larger circle. So you have to mount it high out of reach, because its super easy to snatch the camera off the mount. When it's higher up or further away, the video quality will obviously suffer. That and when it starts recording, it turns on this bright blue and red light which cannot be disabled - this is good to let intruders know you're recording them to deter future attempts, but it's super easy to just snatch the camera down after being alerted that you're being recorded. Long story short, you will NEED to buy a better mount. The issue comes with the camera itself. I understand with a motion detecting camera, it will throw several false alarms a day, which I am okay with because you can adjust the sensitivity. The issue is that even if you set it on high sensitivity, it still takes the camera about 1-2 seconds to turn on. I was trying to catch someone stealing packages off my front porch, and after several test runs, I realized its pretty pointless having a camera that does not catch someone walking up (so you miss their face), and then you just see someone committing the act and walking away. So you'll know someone is there doing something they shouldn't be, but unless you use all three cameras on multiple angles on the same point, you'll never get a face. Night vision is super cool, except that anything closer than 15 meters is so blurred out because of the contrast that once again, you'll never catch a face. The good news is that the software interface is super simple and very easy to operate. Notifications show up almost immediately on your phone. Very easy to navigate. All in all, its a super convenient wireless system that unfortunately falls very short in terms of capturing and video quality. And also plan to spend more money on a real mounting bracket.

The camera didn't meet my needs. I was expecting more from it however it didnt deliver. If you are looking for a simple budget camera to get up and running quickly then perhaps this might work for you. But if you are looking for a real security system pass on this. Here are the cameras flaws. Recording - The camera can only record up to 60 seconds of video at a time. This is very limiting as you might not catch all the video of a certain event. After the 60 seconds the camera has a re-trigger timer before it starts to record again. You can lower it to 10 seconds but still by the time the retrigger finishes it probably too late the crook probably broke in by then. The motion sensor is not too good as well. I would get constant false alerts even though I set activity zones. The camera has terrible lag from the moment it detect motion and starts recording so a lot of times you will only catch the back end of the video for example when i pull into my driveway by the time to camera kicks in and starts recording it only catches by car as half the car is inside the garage already. There is no 24/7 recording functionality so these clips is a you are going to get. Batery Life - If you adjust the settings of the camera to lower the retrigger option and make the camera capture full 60 seconds clips the battery will drain quickly. One camera is in a high traffic area of my house and the battery died within three weeks!!....I returned the blink system and got the Nest system much better no batteries to deal with and records 24/7 so you dont miss anything. Paying the extra $100 bucks for the nest plan in my opinion is worth the extra cost. You get what you pay for and although the video quality is good the features are not worth it.

Got this on sale... so, I feel I got a good value for what it's worth. Activation and mounting is pretty easy. You could have this thing up and running in about 10 minutes. The app is a little cumbersome and features are not explained at all. I had to google what the running man symbol was... as it's not mentioned anywhere in the instructions or the app. The picture is pretty good... it gets a little blurry around the edges. I mounted it in an attempt to capture my front porch and my driveway. It reacts to motion on the front porch just fine...but not the driveway... I can drive my car up and down it and it won't trigger the camera. However, the occasional car driving by on the street just out of frame will set it off (??). So, I'm not sure the motion sensor aligns with the camera exactly. The night vision is much better than I expected. It lights a good 15-20 feet away. I'm still tweaking the clip length as it seems to only want to record 5 second clips.. despite something continuously moving in the frame... even though I have it set to 30 second clips. It does not allow live view while it's recording... so, not sure what the purpose of live view is when you can only look at it when nothing is moving. The mount is pretty flimsy... someone could easily just reach up and pop it off the wall. It also only comes in black... so, I'll have to buy an extra skin for it to make it less obtrusive on the front of my white siding. It's got a temperature gauge where you can set alarm thresholds if it gets too hot or two cold... a nice feature if you've got it in a cabin and you don't want your pipes to freeze. I'd say it's a great basic camera if you can get it on sale and are just looking for a little security at a low cost.... and you maybe only want to cover a few feet with it.

This Blink XT 3 camera system is great. Very affordable solution with low start up costs and no monthly cloud storage fees. The system is super simple to set up (took me 10 minutes), easy to use (the app is great) and the small waterproof cameras pretty much can go anywhere (completely wireless...both for power and signal). The cameras need a good WiFi signal and also a good signal to the Blink base station, but the range is like 300 feet so shouldn't be a problem for most medium sized homes. So far the system is working great and we get an alter on the phone anytime there is movement outside where the cameras are. You can set the app to how sensitive you want the camera to alert, the length of the video and the reset time to when it starts to record again. A couple of things to know: First, this is a basic system that doesn't have a lot of bells and whistles like zoom, two-way audio, live recording (though you can watch live, you just can't save the recording). Second, the video quality is good, but the camera needs to be pretty close to the action. In other words, don't count on these cameras to give great video quality to things more than 15-20 feet away. One last piece of advice. I think the important things to consider when buying a home surveillance system are 1) type (i.e., continuance recording vs. motion sensor.....both have pros and cons but note that continuance recording requires a lot of storage); 2) wireless vs. wired (wireless is okay as long as you have good battery life); and 3) storage (cloud system vs. DVR) and the associated cost (Blink is great with no cost cloud storage).

I purchased this devices to cover my screened in front entrance to my house. The entire operation, app download/set up/usage, connecting camera to wifi, camera set up, and mounting was very straight forward. The Blink developers have really made it easy for the end user. I wanted to capture video of everyone that entered my foyer. I thought, because the camera is directed at the screen door, that the motion sensor would not be able to detect motion through the screens, and would activate once the door was moved. To my surprise the camera picks up the motion of the person walking to the entrance, opening the screen door and entering the foyer. Perfect! Couldn't be better. The picture is clear both day and night. You can easily see, with clear detail, facial features and hear any noise or conversations. You are then notified by your phone app, usually within a second but occasionally 2 seconds, and sent the video of what is happening in front of the camera. Another nice feature is you can have multiple devices connected, like my wife and my phones, tablets, computers etc. and they all get the instant notifications. And then another nice feature is the free cloud service with set it up. Some competitors require a paid subscription to their cloud service. I'm really happy with this purchase and will be adding camera's to cover our pool area.

This product has worked very well for me. I read mixed reviews before purchasing, so I was skeptical. I think this camera probably works best in a small area with limited activity. I have mine mounted under the eave behind my condo to surveil a small area that is surrounded by a privacy fence. I had assumed that I would have to move my hummingbird feeder that is also hanging under the eave, but to my surprise, the hummingbirds don't trigger the motion sensor; nor does my dachshund, who is apparently so short that she walks under the zone of motion detection. I have had a couple of false push notifications when large birds have swooped down in front of the sensor. The camera did pick up a landscape worker who came into the yard. I haven't had the camera long enough to speak about battery life, but mine have lasted several months so far. The lithium batteries cost just a few dollars, so if they last six months, I'll be pleased. I don't want to invest in an expensive security system right now, and this is working well for me right now as a stopgap measure.

ok product in its conception, with features of light weight, battery powered, waterproof design, but it truly will only pick up movement coming from something panning in front of its short field of vision (left/right vice versa), the integrated phone app commands/perimeters don’t always transfer/work, and for it to truly work as advertised you would need to place it somewhere with very limited traffic otherwise you will be changing batteries often. There is really great competition out there in the electronics realm so for this device to not come with any mounting options other than one screw, and no viable plug-in option out of box is incredibly short sighted on the designers part, and does not allow the consumer any ways to easily match the device exactly to the homeowners unique setup. All items to make this product truly useable (cords/mounting/etc.) have to be purchased on top of the original product price. The device has a “ticking/clicking” sound that I personally could do without. When the battery goes low, you are alerted by a red light in the cameras field of vision, oddly impairing it’s function until you replace the battery. In the end, the device malfunctioned and sent it back to the store. Weak sauce.